Actress Eileen Atkins wants the West End to lighten up

As Long Day's Journey into Night opens in the West End, Dame Eileen Atkins
says she yearns for plays with some lightness of touch

Eileen Atkind as Maud, Lady Holland in Upstairs DownstairsPhoto: BBC

By Tim Walker

7:30AM BST 11 Apr 2012

Although it is unlikely to put a spring into the step of David Suchet, who opened last night in the depressing Long Day’s Journey into Night, Dame Eileen Atkins says that she yearns for work these days that has some lightness of touch.

“I can’t bear things that don’t have comedy; I can’t bear plays that don’t have a laugh,” says the great actress, who created, with Jean Marsh, Upstairs Downstairs.

Dame Eileen, who has long bemoaned the lack of satisfying roles available for older actresses, has taken matters into her own hands by writing a play with roles tailor-made for herself and her old pal, Vanessa Redgrave. It is an adaptation of Helen Garner’s novel The Spare Room, about a friendship between two mature women.

“I’ve now spent four years trying to find a time when we’re both free to do this,” says Dame Eileen. “Vanessa and I have now got a time, but the directors we want can’t do it – I daren’t say who they are as I don’t want to offend the others. But we’re sorting that out now; we are going to bring it together for this autumn.“

The play hardly sounds like a barrel of laughs – it is about one woman comforting another who is dying of cancer – but Dame Eileen assures me it has moments of humour.

Garner was initially stunned when she heard that Dame Eileen had adapted her book as a stage play, but has now been won over. “Dame Eileen phoned me and turned out to be absolutely hilarious,” Garner said. “We spoke for about an hour and laughed and laughed.”